


Supposed To

by ScripStrel



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Coma, Cussing, Cyborgs, F/M, Freeform, Language, Near Death, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Short One Shot, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 04:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14156241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: Evan Hansen is dead.You would think Connor might've moved on by now. You'd think that, since he hadn't, Alana would open her eyes already and leave the freak alone.You'd think Jared wouldn't care.Jared would, too.He wasn't supposed to feel like this. At all. Ever.





	Supposed To

“You must think you’re pretty cool, don’t you?” Jared glared up at Connor through his eyelashes.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Connor didn’t look up from his book. Jared had no clue where he’d gotten it. He was probably just trying to be vintage and hipster. It was primitive. Whatever. Just another reason to hate him. Jared had a list at this point.

“The hardened bad boy thing? The stupid rebel look? You’re so emo, which, by the way, is a word that doesn’t even exist anymore. I had to look it up in the dictionary archives from centuries ago.” Connor’s dark hair was too long, half-hiding his eyes. His clothes were dark and constricting, with more layers than made any practical sense, especially amidst the aggressive heat and humidity of whirring machinery that was their passage through the stars. His breath was sticky in the sterile air, a vein pulsing grotesque in his neck. He leaned against a pad of cast iron lockers. The claustrophobia-inducing walls of the satellite hummed hot around them. Neon work lights cast orange shadows on the sharp angles of Connor’s jaw and cheekbones, tanning his sallow complexion with blood, glaring on Jared’s retinas. A vent hissed steam a few inches from Jared’s face, smarting against his grafted skin.

“So?” Connor was still staring at the book.

“So what makes you so fucking special?”

He scoffed and turned the page. “I’m not.”

“Yeah? Tell that to Alana.” Alana, the reason at the top of the list. Alana, who was always there to talk to. Alana, who could actually keep up with his train of thought. Alana, who had bothered to tell him how much of a dick he could be without judging him for it and without walking away because of it. Alana, who could actually make him think, but could just as easily turn his brain to a mess of senseless sparks and send a current through his joints which probably wasn’t supposed to happen. Alana—

“What does she have to do with this?” Connor finally glanced up from the antique in his hands. 

“You don’t know? I’m not sure if I should be relieved or disgusted.” Connor hummed a vague acknowledgement. He was lost in the book again. “What are you even reading?”

“None of your business.”

“You bet your ass it is. I’m trying to talk to you about something important.”

“Get on with it then.”

Jared shook his head, scoffing with a creak. “What’s with you?” The words had a spearhead attached, and Connor noticed. He tensed, turning to face Jared. His novel was suddenly even less to him than it was to anyone else. He snapped it closed in his fist. Jared fought the urge to shrink away. Whoever said instincts were obsolete had never been stared down by Connor Murphy.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he growled.

“Woah, chill out freakshow.” Jared’s words escaped with a snicker, pulled out by the intensity of Connor’s gaze. He didn’t think he was supposed to be this nervous. Something hot and clammy was seeping around his shirt collar, like leaking oil. If he could blush, he probably would. If he could cry, he might be doing that too.

“What did you just call me?” He towered over him now, some kind of old-world myth of a faceless boogeyman, all limbs of shadowed anger. His breath was hot on his face, making Jared’s vision flicker. He went numb.

“A freak? Seriously, fuck off. Cool it.” 

“You fuck off, asshole. You have no clue who I am.” Before Jared could call out, before he could think to want to, Connor was slamming the book into his locker with a thrumming clang and pushing past him, storming away into the heart of the ship’s maze, strides ringing on the iron grating. He left a defeated android behind. A defeated android who really needed a reboot after that.

There were some things he didn’t understand. No one had managed to program him with high-level calculus yet, for instance. Old literature made no sense either—Shakespeare was probably drunk off his ass his whole life, or something. He didn’t understand dreams. Who wants vivid hallucinations every time they’re unconscious? He especially didn’t understand something as primitive as fear, or he hadn’t until now. Jared wasn’t programmed for fear, and he definitely didn’t like it. His processor was fried. His fingers were tingling, rusting from the inside as his diagnostics ran. The steam from the pipes around him didn’t penetrate to his nerves. He dragged his hands over his face, electricity humming along the pale, synthetic flesh. Polymers of hair fell across his forehead, lank as if with a petroleum sweat that couldn’t have been there. He ran a hand through it, tugging at the dusky dyed strands of plastic. His fingers brushed the tarnished charging port at the nape of his neck, jagged with exposed sensors which should’ve been replaced ages ago. He was cold.

“Hey! Connor! I was just looking for you! Woah, hey.” Alana’s voice, from about two corridors away.

It jump-started something in Jared’s chest. He didn’t understand that either, but he didn’t mind it so much. The tingly feeling was kinda nice, actually. Completely uncalled for and probably a glitch of some sort, but kinda nice and warm. Jared forced himself to move, dragging his feet through the stilted work shafts towards her voice.

“What do you want?” Connor deflated against the pipe-laced wall. Alana’s fingers curled around his wrist, holding him in place, keeping him grounded from his anger high. Cables hung from the low ceiling. Panels fell away, revealing wiring and puffs of gas from the decrepit satellite. Iron grating covered what few surfaces weren’t falling apart.

Rusting metal and scalding steam. Home sweet home.

“I was, well, I had something I wanted to tell you.” Alana loosened her grip. Her face twisted with thought, her lip ground between her teeth. Her eyes were warm behind her glasses, which were welded to her nose, the only thing keeping her from blindness and madness, thanks to the pressure to the secondary hard drive in her frontal lobe. Wires tangled into her hair. Metal fused into her throat and up her back. The hand uncoiling from Connor’s arm was a bundle of skinless chrome joints. A gear turned in her living wrist, synced with her pulse. She was a hybrid of what should have died and what would never, and she was beautiful. The engineering used to make her that is. Right. Funny, he’d never understood beauty before, either. It was sleek, seamless, stunning. The silvery metal was stark against her dark skin, shining like jewelry. It probably didn’t help Jared understand _her_. He couldn’t categorize her. She was something he wasn’t, but she was also so familiar. He surveyed Connor from over her shoulder. He was a lot less intimidating when he was curled in on himself.

“Don’t bother,” Jared said. “His skull’s too thick. I couldn’t get a word in.”

“What the fuck? Leave me alone.” Connor’s frantic energy was pushed in on him, suffocating him. He was choking on it, telegraphing his panic to every one of Jared’s sensors. Paranoid, much? It’s not like they were threatening him or anything. Jared had never understood that either. What was with these cavemen? And why did the circuitry in his chest still ache? 

“No. I’m sorry, but you need to listen to us,” Alana pleaded, craning her head to survey Connor.

“I don’t need to do anything. You can’t make me do shit.”

“Alana,” Jared murmured. She wasn’t about to do this. _Shut up,_ stupid heartburn that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“You may not understand. I know I don’t, which is new and moderately concerning, but you need to listen.” She grasped Connor’s hands again, steeling herself in his reluctant embrace.

“ _Alana_.” She ignored him. Shit.

“Look, you can’t go on doing this.” Alana hadn’t moved, but Connor pushed himself still further into the wall away from her. “Living inside your own head, I mean. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but you need to stop and think about what other people need. And before you ask, yes, this means a lot to me. I don’t want you to shut yourself out like this. It’s not healthy.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, bracing herself for the thing Jared had been dreading, the thing that was sending all these warning signals he’d never been programmed with. “Look, I really like you. I probably shouldn’t, but I do. I don’t know how else to say it… And you can’t seem to see me. No one really does, but that’s hardly the point. At the very least, I’m your friend, and I want to be more but if you’re not ready, that’s, well, that’s fine. But I care about you. I just don’t understand why you can’t seem to see _anyone_.”

She slumped, energy gone. Her face was still closed off against his reaction. Jared could hear the clicking cog of her heart. It was too fast. He could hear his own vents kicking on in his ears. When did it get so hot in here? Was something ringing? Connor was still against the wall.

“Look, just,” Connor said, voice as flat as his face. He swallowed, shallow and shaky. “Shit happens, okay? Leave me alone.”

“What?” Alana whispered. Her eyes peered open, droopy and wet. Her jaw had gone slack. _What?_ was right. That wasn’t a fucking answer. Connor was supposed to have empathy or some shit. He was supposed to know how to deal with this fuckery because he was supposed to be able to feel it in the first place.

It was Jared who was supposed to be hurting her feelings because he didn’t know better. It was Jared who was supposed to be a soulless shell. He was the one who was supposed to be above shitty feelings. Connor was supposed to be vulnerable. Connor was supposed to comfort her. He was supposed to know how she would feel. He was supposed to have some kind of humanity. Yeah. Figures.

The fuck up had fucked up, and even Jared could tell.

“Sorry Alana,” Jared sneered, “guess our resident troubled teen would rather be an untouchable god. That’s it, right? You’re just in this for kicks.” He crossed his arms, glaring at Connor. “Go on. Go jack off to all your fucking books. Be in your own little paradise, you dick. Don’t mind us.” He scoffed. “And they call me an asshole.” Jared wanted the words to burn. To shock. It would serve the fleshy creep right. Let him get angry. Make him feel because he should be used to it by now. This was _normal_ for him. Jared wanted him to start yelling again. He didn’t.

“That’s not—” Connor started.

“Oh, go jump out of the airlock, already.”

“Jared—” There was a warning in Alana’s eyes.

“You don’t think I’ve thought about that, Tin Man?” Connor hissed.

“Connor!” She looked to him in horror.

“You know what I think—?”

“You think I care?’

“Is this about Evan?” Alana’s voice drove a spike into their growing volume and heat. Connor flinched.  

“No,” said Connor. Jared snorted. Something fell into place, finally finished buffering. _Finally_ something made sense.

“Aww,” he cooed. “Edge Lord’s still mourning his pet, isn’t he? Like that? Edge Lord? Found that in the archives, too.” Connor glowered at his combat boots on the grated floor. Jared’s energy faltered where it fell in thin air. “Oh, you can’t be serious.”

“Right, because you have any idea how it feels.” Connor’s stony gaze was still frozen downwards.

“Oh, you have feelings now?” Jared’s joke was empty. Of course he did. He wasn’t ever _meant_ to be immune to them. Connor was blessed with them, without the curse of dealing when they came out of fucking nowhere.

Shit.

This was just easier, somehow. It was always easier to be an ass. A lazy coding shortcut, maybe. A way to avoid the bugs of deeper emotional responses. Bugs, like the line of ants seeming to crawl their way down his spine, settling tight in his gut at the way Alana was looking at him. There was a shadow in her gaze. It made Jared see strings of binary. He ignored it, still smirking at Connor.

“More than you do,” Connor spat. He crossed his arms. He looked like a mannequin. A really sad, gothic mannequin.

“Really? I couldn’t tell." 

“Jared, let him talk.” Alana’s voice pushed his back down his throat. She wasn’t looking at him. She was fidgeting, tipping her weight. She bent and unbent her mechanical fingers idly, pressing the skin of her other hand against the metal. Her eyes were hidden by the corridor’s burnt light on her glasses, but her face was tilted soft towards Connor’s. Something twanged behind Jared’s eyes.

“I don’t want to talk,” Connor muttered.

“Why not? It’ll help. I want to help.”

“Maybe it’s that I don’t want to talk about it to _you_. You wouldn’t care anyway.” He wasn’t moving. His fingers clenched stiff against his forearms, twitching and white-knuckled. His hair fell over his face, fluttering in deliberate breath.

“Look, I know how you feel about us. I know we’re _different_ . I know you feel alone. I know you blame us. I know you blame yourself. It was an _accident._ You have to realize that there’s nothing anyone could’ve done.”

“ _You don’t get it, do you!?_ ” Connor’s forced facade exploded. His anger reverberated in the echoes of the metal hallway. Jared dumbly wondered why none of the other crew members had responded to their commotion, but then Connor was glaring at him, face contorted, eyes shining with toxic tears, rage laser-focused, and Jared’s thoughts froze.

“D-don’t look at me like that!” He stumbled backwards.

“You fucking pieces of scrap ruined my life with what you did to him. You think you can just go and let him die and expect everything to be _normal?_ ” Connor’s fury rumbled like thunder. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to get away from here? How badly I want to just disappear because no one would notice anyway? No one gave a shit when you killed him. Why the fuck would I be any different? It’s not like anyone gives a shit now, either. No one cares about any of us who are left. It’s all about _progress_ , isn’t it? No one gives a flying fuck about the monkeys.”

He turned to Alana. Jared slumped in on himself, limp with near euphoric relief. Alana withered under Connor’s eyes, but met his intensity with something of her own. In his state, Jared didn’t know or care if it was fear or grief or hope.

“You know why I can barely stand to look at you?” Connor said. “You look too much like him. That damn look in your eyes. Like what he wanted to be. Part of the _future_. What he wanted to be without realizing how much it would fuck him up.” Connor’s shoulders were shaking. Heat shuddered across his posture as he went slack. His tears had fallen at some point. Their tracks shone laminate on his face. He surveyed them both, his fire dulled to ashy embers. He hissed, “Touch me again and I’ll rip you apart piece by piece like the piles of scrap you are, got it?”

He stalked away down the corridor, boots striking cloister bells against the floor. Jared’s joints were melted. Alana stood in a daze. Her breath was shallow. Her face shone with a film of shock. Jared stumbled forward, pulled by a tiny, ticking urge in his sternum. Alana broke from her stupor. Eyes wide, she spun around to search after Connor. She flinched as his retreating form turned into a maintenance shaft, and area of the ship under construction, littered with scaffolding and live wire. She dashed after him, the bells of her footsteps ringing frantic chimes.

“Wait! No, hold on!” she called. “Don’t go—” He was standing in a darkened doorway. Statuesque. Stony. He didn’t react, frozen towards the figure laying half-finished on a table in the center of the glorified broom closet.

Evan lay on the table, comatose.

Not dead.

“What the fuck is this?” Connor choked out. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Connor stood on a precipice, on the tip of a needle, at the event horizon of a black hole, about to fall. His eyes flickered a million different thoughts, a million different urges, all there and gone in a nanosecond. He was locked on Evan, prone in front of him. Jared wasn’t sure if he would fall forward or shrink back. It didn’t seem like Connor himself knew either.

“No, no. I’ve been repairing him.” Alana darted in front of Connor, who didn’t meet her eyes, didn’t notice her movement. “I’m not good at giving up a project.” She smiled despite herself and swallowed, fusing her face back into a mask. “He’s, well… most of the original parts had to go after the first time. They were too damaged. But he’s okay! We’re just working out the bugs.” Alana bit her lip and looked back at the boy on the operating table.

It was a miracle he was recognizable. Evan’s dark face was marred with plates and circuitry. His hair had been buzzed off. His scalp was streaked with jagged scars. His arm was encased in iron, bent at an awkward angle. The other arm was gone, and a stack of incompatible prosthetics had gathered in the corner. Half-open eyes glowed with ethereal LED, but even that was low, fuzzy. A torn hole gaped in his chest, bloody cogs and wired viscera exposed to the dusty chamber. His legs were a patchwork of skins, grafted together in a quilt of flesh. One foot ended in a steel peg. Welts of sloppy soldering scattered his complexion, artificial acne seams. Probes stuck out of his jugular and his temples, sparking through their connections to the sputtering life support machines crowding around him. The next generation of Frankenstein’s monster.

Jared’s cooling vents kicked on again. The air was muggy with stench. The stench of an incoming storm. They were in a subterranean volcano waiting to erupt.

“You weren’t supposed to see him yet,” Alana finished, voice faint.

“This is sick,” Connor breathed.

“I couldn’t agree more. Waste of time and energy, if you ask me.” Jared’s voice, no matter how cold and light, only drove them further underground.

“I didn’t. Fuck off.”

“Connor, I promise. He’s fine.” Alana’s words were thin. She didn’t believe it anymore either.

“Fine?” Connor’s voice rose as some kind of hysteria finally broke through. “Evan Hansen is supposed to be dead. You can’t just decide you can fix him! He’s dead. You’re all fucking sick.” And with that, he was gone.

The heat left with him. Jared and Alana stood in heavy darkness. Jared’s vision flickered in one eye. Alana shivered. Jared fought down the inexplicable urge to wrap an arm around her. The probability rang in his head: those might’ve been the last words they heard from Connor.

The last they saw of him before he jumped out of the airlock.

“Wait, please,” Alana stammered, a ghost of a sob lodged in her throat.

“Humans, am I right?” She didn’t even look at him, just swallowed her tears and pushed past after the deadman.

Shit.

Fucking shit.

Jared stood alone with a zombie. Everything hurt. He wasn’t _supposed to_ hurt. His brain was numb. Made of stone. Really fucking soft stone, apparently. Nothing made sense any more. He didn’t _understand_. His sensors were dead. Everything was quiet, but everything screamed at him that something was wrong. Wrong. A flaw, a bug, a crash. Wrong. Dust swirled in the faint light of the buzzing machines. Evan’s heartbeat shimmered in the air, reflected off a staticky screen, slow and steady and flickering like an ember. The floor was tilted. Jared was tipping, off-kilter. For the first time ever, he wished for real gravity, stone beneath him instead of a labyrinth of steel and the empty void of space.

Nothing made sense anymore. None of this was supposed to be happening. A glare at Evan’s carcass gave him a dull headache. Humans.

Yeah.

It hurt. It hurt like hell.

Jared would swap places in the beat of the heart he wasn’t supposed to have. He stood in the dark with a zombie and choked on tears he couldn’t cry.

Tears he wasn’t supposed to _need_ to cry.


End file.
